Content distribution services used for fee-paying distribution of digital contents are one of a number of network businesses at present receiving a great deal of attention from the music industry. An example of such a service is Electronic Music Distribution (EMD). A large number of corporations and individuals are participating in EMD, with the aim of taking advantage of the new business opportunities that it offers. A conventional distribution system that realizes EMD includes a user terminal, a distribution server, and a billing server. Such a system distributes music contents for a fee, the music contents having been encoded using an audio compression codec such as MP3 (Moving Picture Experts Group 1 Audio Layer 3), Dolby AC-3 (Digital Audio Compression) or AAC (Advanced Audio Coding).
A user accesses a Web site by inputting an URL (Uniform Resource Locator) or similar into a user terminal, and requests that a music content be downloaded from the distribution server. The music content is downloaded using a conventional Web browser such as Netscape's Internet Explorer, and stored in an encrypted state in the memory of the user terminal.
Upon receiving a download request from the user terminal, the distribution server transmits the music content to the user terminal.
Once the music content has been transmitted to the user terminal, the billing server bills the user for the music content by informing the user terminal of the purchase fee required for the music contents.
Distribution servers operated by major record companies are well publicized, but those operated by independent artists tend to be overlooked. For the independent artist who is not signed to a major record label, the music contents they create are a vital source of revenue. Such artists are therefore reluctant to surrender control of music contents to a third party, and instead attempt to manage their distribution on their own privately-operated server. For this reason, there are a large number of distribution servers operated by independent artists, and the total number of distribution servers operated on the World Wide Web (WWW) is said to be several hundred or even several thousand.
However, in such a situation, where a large number of distribution servers are competing for services on the WWW, music content sales will inevitably be monopolized by the major record companies, and distribution servers operated by independent artists will face an increasingly uphill struggle in their fight to obtain a share of the music content market. The root of this problem lies in the fact that the distribution servers of the major record companies can obtain a high profile by advertizing the URL of their Web site in the media, for example via television or magazines. As a result, the distribution servers operated by major record companies are accessed by a large number of users, to whom they can then sell music contents. Conversely, distribution servers operated by independent artists have little or no opportunity to publicise their Web site URL in the media. Therefore, such distribution servers have no alternatively but to wait for users to access their Web site by searching the WWW using a title or artist name as a keyword.
When a user searches the Web using a keyword such as a title or artist name, all Web sites that happen to include the same word will be hit. Consequently, the user will be presented with an enormous list of some hundreds of search results. Searching such a list to find the distribution server for a particular independent artist requires a great deal of patience, and very few users are prepared to go to that amount of trouble to find a distribution server for an independent artist. Consequently, even if the artist concerned has created high quality music contents, it will not be possible for their talent to be recognized by the general public if they manage their own music contents on an independent distribution server in this way, and they will remain in obscurity.
The major record companies recognize that extremely talented musicians exist among the independent artists, and it is not their desire that artists of such talent be consigned to oblivion. Provided that their profits can be safeguarded, therefore, the major record companies are quite prepared to support the activities of independent artists. However, conventional distribution systems are not provided with a method for supporting independent artists that satisfies the requirements of the major record companies. The inventors of this invention believe that the true direction of EMD lies in providing a contents distribution system that encompasses support for independent artists.